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Topic: Quick Forum Tips (Read 4486 times)

After studying how people use things and tend to miss others... this thread will will contain various features and shortcuts that are either buried or overlooked.

Feel free to add to it or discuss!

Today's topic: Finding new posts.

There are several methods of finding what's new. The key action is that you need to LOG IN, so it can keep track for you.

-- Click the "Show unread posts since last visit" link.This link is usually located where it says "Hello, Smurfbutcher Bob!" It does NOT list all unread posts; it is filtered by your last login time.In this list will be another link to "show all unread posts". That view shows all, and does not filter based on your last login time.

-- Board iconsAll of the boards have a spade next to time. This spade changes color based on unread messages.Generally speaking, if the spade is red... there is an unread message in it, or one of its child boards. If the spade is grey, there isn't.You can click on the spade to view the unread messages in that board and its children. This feature does not consider your last login time.When viewing these unread messages, there is a link to "mark all messages as read." This will tag the messages in the viewed board, only. Other boards will not be affected.

-- If you've ever wondered why the spades stay red after you "view unread posts since last visit", it is because you still have unread posts... probably from a previous visit. On the main page, click "Mark ALL messages as read" to clear them. Or, click on the red spade, and mark that specific board as read.

- The board categories ("Site Stuff", "Gambit", "X-Men", "Kitchen Sink") can all be clicked to "collapse" the category, and declutter the screen. Click again to expand them. Running the Millenium theme with all categories collapsed... looks nice.

- Near the bottom of the page is a section called "Forum Stats". It contains a link to "View the most recent posts", and provides a consolidated view of the past 100 entries (10 per page), complete with the message bodies. Note that this view does NOT keep track of what's "new"; it merely spits out the last 100 posts.

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"The true definition of Madness is repeating the same action, over and over, hoping for a different result." - Einstein"Einstein never used Windows." - SBB

RSS tips:RSS feeds are normally grabbed as a "guest". If you exclusively use RSS, your account will appear to be unused. Likewise, if you wish to see posts in some of the restricted boards... being a guest will not work.Some browsers (firefox, IE7) have integrated feed viewers (sage, feedview, etc). And therein lies a trick that allows you to (1) keep your account alive, and (2) access the restricted boards if desired.a) Log in to the site, and check the box that says "Always stay logged in". This will set a cookie on your machine with your credentials.b) From there on, the browser will submit this cookie when it checks the feed, and the feed will be generated according to your account rights. The rest of the board will also know that you aren't dead, because your profile will show that your username is active.c) At this time, the RSS feed will not tell you if you have received a PM. I'll try to kludge up a solution for this in the future, but you'll (obviously) need to do the "always stay logged in" trick for it to work.

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"The true definition of Madness is repeating the same action, over and over, hoping for a different result." - Einstein"Einstein never used Windows." - SBB

On the main forum index, the board categories are collapsible - simply click on the category name to hide the boards beneath it, or click the category name to expose them.

For me, I usually hide "Gambit", "X-Men", and "Comics". I leave "Site Stuff" and "Kitchen" expanded. Others might choose to hide X-Men and Comics, or anything else that they don't normally post new threads in.

Hiding boards goes a long way toward gaining back some screen real estate, and it does not impact your ability to see "new posts" in those boards - new posts will be reported, regardless.

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"The true definition of Madness is repeating the same action, over and over, hoping for a different result." - Einstein"Einstein never used Windows." - SBB